Where the Light Gets In...October 30, 2021

Rumi said that the wound is where the light enters us.

Someone recently asked what I will take from this journey. What I know to be true. I sighed, saying that it might take a decade or more to know. But a few things come.

This week I visited my surgeon. Our laughter rang, a celebration of life, the purest sort. I contrasted it with our visit in January. That had been a scary, sober, terrifying introduction to one another, at least for me.

And in that first conversation, I defined my way.

I would be a patient who turned away from scans. No, doctor, I do not want to see the size of the tumor. I do not want to know my blood pressure and temperature. I do not want to look at those blood transfusions...put a blanket over them, please. I do not want to hear statistics, for I hear the magic beating of my heart.

I realized quickly that I could and must be who I wanted to be. Noone could tell me how to walk this journey...it was mine to make, it was mine to take. Others would do it differently and that was well and good, that was most well and good for them. But I would do it my way. There could be no other way.

And it required that this real me show up. That I show up for the appointment, for the surgery, for the chemo infusion, time and again. I might be teary eyed and quaking, but I needed to get my body in that tube, to crawl there if need be. I didn't cancel or change one single appointment.

I needed to get there. Because I learned something else too...

...I learned that nothing is constant. When throbbing panic lapped, I began to trust that peace would come the next second or minute or day or week. I learned that when despair or nausea or anemia threatened to take me under, if I just kept breathing...that wonder and peace would be there soon enough.

I learned that I am blessed to live in a place where there is a big team of doctors and medical folks who are brilliant and kind and passionate to save lives like mine. While I soared to the heavens at 35,000 feet, they strategized a treatment plan.

They dared to look at my scans and perform a harrowing surgery, while I called in the angels and folded my hands to pray. Every single day.

So in that exam room this week, the light swept in. I looked at my surgeon and my nurse...and realized that I had been in the company of angels, here on earth.

For yes, the wound is where the light gets in.

And it is a beautiful light, indeed. I know this to be true. We can trust this to be true.